Ritik, Chanda, Shaili and Nivya serve notice of potential with National records

November 3, 2019

Guntur, November 3: Ritik Malik (Delhi), Shaili Singh (Karnataka), Chanda (Delhi) and Nivya Antony (Kerala) set new National records in the boys under-18 100m, girls U-16 long jump, girls under-20 1500m and girls under-20 pole vault respectively on the second day of the 35th National Junior Athletics Championships at the Acharya Nagarjuna University campus here on Sunday.

Ritik Malik’s sprint was quite the highlight of the proceedings as his time of 10.65 seconds broke the National and Meet Records held by Gurindervir Singh (10.69) since 2017 and Praveen Muthukumaran (10.75) since 2011 respectively. His pace did catch VA Shashikant (Karnataka) by surprise and relegated him to second place.

Chanda, who clocked 4:30.25 in finish fourth in the National Inter-State Championships in Lucknow and 4:19.94 in taking third place in the National Open in Ranchi last month, showed that she has potential to do better by displaying sound race tactics on Sunday. She raced the clock rather than be stuck in traffic, taking the lead from the start and running her own race.

Nivya Antony was in good form coming into the championships. She has achieved her previous best mark of 3.70m in the Kerala State Athletics Championships in Kozhikode in June this year and matched that performance in the K Joseph Memorial Inter-District Championships in Thiruvanthapuram in August. Shaili Singh improved her national and meet record in girls U-16 long jump to 6.15m. She held previous record of 5.14m which she created at same competition last year at Ranchi.

There were meet records for Lovepreet Singh (AFI-Punjab) and AT Daneshwari (Karnataka) respectively in the boys and girls under-20 100m races. Lavepreet Singh’s dash in 10.60 seconds was easily his personal best, improving on the 10.66 he clocked in the National Open Athletics Championships in Ranchi last month. Sujith Kuttan held the record from 2010 with a time of 10.65.

Daneshwari rewrote one of the oldest records in the book, improving on V Pandeeswari’s 11.92 seconds set in 1996. Her own previous best was 11.88 seconds, clocked when finishing second in the Federation Cup for Juniors in September last. On Sunday, she was quick off the block and blazed away to the finish, 13-hundredths of a second outside Dutee Chand’s National mark.